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In mid-December 2015, Congress passed a 2,000-plus-page omnibus spending bill for fiscal year 2016. Both parties were quick to declare victory after the passage of the $1.8 trillion package. White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters “we feel good about the outcome, primarily because we got a compromise budget agreement that fought off a wide variety of ideological riders.” The office of House Speaker Paul J. Ryan touted the bill’s “64 billion for overseas contingency operations” for, among other things, assisting ”European countries facing Russian aggression.”
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Whether White House spokesman Josh Earnest was referring, in part, to the Conyers-Yoho amendment as one of those “ideological riders” the administration fought to defeat is unclear. What is clear is that by stripping out the anti-neo-Nazi provision, Congress and the administration have paved the way for US funding to end up in the hands of the most noxious elements circulating within Ukraine today.

Robert Parry has a good piece on how the Rick Lyman and Andrew E. Kramer of The New York Times have done a new piece of state propaganda by decontextualizing the origins of the conflict:

One way the Times has falsified the Ukraine narrative is by dating the origins of the crisis to several months after the crisis actually began. So, the lead story in Saturday’s editions ignored the actual chronology of events and started the clock with the appearance of Russian troops in Crimea in spring 2014.
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In other words, the story doesn’t start in fall 2013 with the extraordinary U.S. intervention in Ukrainian political affairs – spearheaded by American neocons, such as National Endowment for Democracy president Carl Gershman, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland and Sen. John McCain – nor with the U.S.-backed coup on Feb. 22, 2014, which ousted elected President Viktor Yanukovych and put one of Nuland’s chosen leaders, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, in as Prime Minister.

As I commented on the site, one could also start the story of this conflict in 1917. In that case, one would include Stalin’s brutal famine, created in part artificially, that led to mass deaths. A fully-accurate narrative of the Ukrainian crisis would state that the country does have a pro-western faction and a pro-Russian faction, that the pro-western faction resents the Russian colonial mindset but fails to appreciate that if it becomes free of Russia, it will become a Western colony, and that the pro-Russian regions are being prodded, encourage, and supplied by Russia. In other words, this may be a proxy conflict, but it has substantial support from both factions of the population.

A better antidote to the half-blind perspective of the New York Times is to bring another half-blind perspective from the other side and try to integrate the two. In that regard, I want to mention Slavyangrad and The Vineyard of the Saker, recommended by reader Jo6Pac. Slavyangrad has a big map of the hostilities that’s very useful. It shows how the pro-Russian offensive in the south would put the rebels within less than 100 miles of creating a land route between Russia and Crimea. It would give the Russians a friendly port much nearer to Crimea. The Vineyard links a pretty convincing film of a man in uniform–presumed to be in the Kiev army– who sounds like an Aussie and one might reasonably suspect of being a contractor supplied by the West. In the shelling of civilians in Mariupol, The Guardian blames it on rebels, while the Vineyard claims that the shells came from Kiev’s army. It’s just as amusing to hear The Saker talk about how professional and precise the pro-Russian artillery is, even though it’s supposedly fired by amateurs as it is to read The Guardian effectively blame the rebels for civilian deaths without providing any real evidence for culpability.

Are there Russian soldiers in there? Are there western soldiers in there? Probably yes to both. Neither Kiev’s army nor the pro-Russian militias would seem to have enough combat training or access to weapons to cause this much havoc on their own. What seems clear is that Russia has decided to re-supply the pro-Russian side and that the West is going to try to pretend that it has nothing to do with creating this proxy war. At what point is the Obama Administration going to decide that the Russians are dead serious? At what point is it going to occur to the Administration that it has other fish in the pan, fish which would have been much more easily fried with Russian help? And when will the NYT get so embarrassed by its reporting and the failure of American policy that it tells the Administration that it’s no longer going to serve as an organ of state propaganda? Based on the extensive Honduran experience documented on this blog, one would have to guess that the answer to those three questions is “Never.”

Nuclear war, anyone?

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This is just another story of what is forming a pattern. Deutsche Welle did a program on The Aryans, which describes the re-emergence of Nazism in Germany. There are towns where Jews and non-whites cannot go out after dark, and where local people are afraid to talk about the extremists. We know about the neo-Nazis in the Ukraine. And now this, from Libby Brooks of The Guardian:

Six people were arrested amid angry scenes in Glasgow on Friday night as a group of young pro-union supporters clashed with pro-independence supporters who had been gathering in George Square throughout the day.

Police acted to separate a small group of pro-independence supporters from a group of skinheads believed to have marched from the loyalist pub the Louden Tavern in nearby Duke Street.

Individuals argued over the referendum result and a chorus of Rule Britannia was countered by Flower of Scotland.

As the evening wore on, and the yes supporters dispersed, more loyalists converged on the square, many of them draped in union flags.

A number were teenagers, and clearly drunk. At one point a section of the crowd broke through police lines and marched up the central shopping area of Buchanan Street, chanting the words to Rule Britannia. Some shouted loyalist slogans and racist abuse, and appeared to make Nazi salutes.

I do not think these are isolated events. I think there is an aggressive, international neo-Nazi movement, fueled by unemployment and culture change, and to some degree abetted by reactionary elements in business and government. The rest of the world should react accordingly.

But there is an increasing worry that while the Azov and other volunteer battalions might be Ukraine’s most potent and reliable force on the battlefield against the separatists, they also pose the most serious threat to the Ukrainian government, and perhaps even the state, when the conflict in the east is over. The Azov causes particular concern due to the far right, even neo-Nazi, leanings of many of its members.

Dmitry claimed not to be a Nazi, but waxed lyrical about Adolf Hitler as a military leader, and believes the Holocaust never happened. Not everyone in the Azov battalion thinks like Dmitry, but after speaking with dozens of its fighters and embedding on several missions during the past week in and around the strategic port city of Mariupol, the Guardian found many of them to have disturbing political views, and almost all to be intent on “bringing the fight to Kiev” when the war in the east is over.

The battalion’s symbol is reminiscent of the Nazi Wolfsangel, though the battalion claims it is in fact meant to be the letters N and I crossed over each other, standing for “national idea”. Many of its members have links with neo-Nazi groups, and even those who laughed off the idea that they are neo-Nazis did not give the most convincing denials.
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Indeed, much of what Azov members say about race and nationalism is strikingly similar to the views of the more radical Russian nationalists fighting with the separatist side.
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The Ukrainian armed forces are “an army of lions led by a sheep”, said Dmitry, and there is only so long that dynamic can continue. With so many armed, battle-hardened and angry young men coming back from the front, there is a danger that the rolling of heads could be more than a metaphor. Dmitry said he believes that Ukraine needs “a strong dictator to come to power who could shed plenty of blood but unite the nation in the process”.

Many in the Azov battalion [and other batallions] with whom the Guardian spoke shared this view

Anti-Semitism and strongman worship are so common in parts of the world that one hesitates to call them abnormal. They are part of the air that people breathe. But the part about the Azov fighters and others like them might turn on the Poroshenko government should give Washington pause. It’s crazy that the US has sided with Kiev given its use of neo-Nazi elements.

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Hint: It’s not as clear-cut as the anchors at RT (the ones who haven’t quit in protest, anyway) make it seem.

Just as it’s hard to know what’s really going on in Latin America without a working knowledge of Spanish, it’s hard to know what’s really going on in Ukraine and Russia without at least a working knowledge of Russian. I don’t have that knowledge, but I know someone who does, and here’s what he has to say:

Yanukovich asked the Berkut (Riot Police) to fire on the Ukranian People. The Berkut chief declined and RESIGNED which was the right thing to do. That is what the Occupy people here would have said, right?

And that caused a crisis; particularly for the “Party of Regions” which is Yanukovich’s party. The Rada (Ukranian Parliament) agreed, and so did Party of Regions with the Riot Police guy and said ” FUCK YOU – YOU CANNOT order our soldiers to fire on our people!”

Fast forward to today; in Russia the opposition news networks have been silenced – the NDAA or SOPA the Left in the US has feared was just put in place by – PUTIN! You can get Channel Rain or Echo of Moscow – but Russians and Ukrainians can’t.

So you tell these idiots at FDL they have been backing the wrong horse in this race. Dan Wright in particular. Fucking wrong from the first day he bothered to notice the Maidan.